1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus which recognizes an object affecting the traveling of a subject vehicle.
2. Related Background Art
Conventionally, as this type of vehicle surroundings monitoring apparatus, there has been suggested a display processor which extracts an image area of a pedestrian likely to come in contact with a subject vehicle from an image of the surroundings of the vehicle captured by an infrared camera and visually provides the information to a driver of the vehicle (for example, refer to Japanese Patent Laid-Open No. Hei 11(1999)-328364). This apparatus binarizes the captured infrared image to find out a high-luminance area and determines the high-luminance area to be a pedestrian's head if the centroid position, area ratio, net area and the like of the high-luminance area satisfy predetermined head determination conditions. After determining the area of the pedestrian's head, it then sets an area including a pedestrian's body and displays these areas separated from other areas. Thereby, the position of the pedestrian's entire body is identified in the captured infrared image, and the information is displayed to the vehicle driver as a visual aid.
An object existing around the vehicle and likely to come in contact with the vehicle, however, is not limited to a pedestrian. For example, a large animal such as a deer may exist on a road and come in contact with the vehicle. In this situation, the large animal is not determined to be a pedestrian under the above determination conditions based on the centroid position, area ratio, net area and the like of the high-luminance area. Therefore, the apparatus has such a disadvantage that information on the large animal is not presented to the vehicle driver as information calling attention to it, though the large animal is likely to come in contact with the vehicle.